Weekend of remembrance and healing

Across Northern BC this past Saturday, people gathered to remember the victims of the Highway of Tears and renewed their call for action. In Prince Rupert the procession traveled from Five Corners to the Museum of Northern B. C. on First Avenue.

The Daily News had full information on the weekend’s remembrances in its Monday edition.

HIGHWAY 16 MARCHERS SEEK THE ROAD TO HEALING
Dozens gather to remember missing women and renew calls for action

By Michael Scott Curnes
Special to the Daily News
Monday, September 18, 2006
Pages One and Three

There were at least 36 reasons to march for more than 100 participants that turned out Saturday to commemorate the lives of women who have been murdered or who have gone missing along Highway 16 during the last 17 years.

Led by two dozen Nisga’a dancers and drummers, including representatives of the five living generations of the Young Family, the sometimes somber procession made its way from the Five Corners intersection along Second Avenue (Highway 16) to the Museum of Northern B. C.

At the age of 81, Dorothy Young was the oldest participant in Saturday’s march and her five-and-a-half month old great, grand daughter, Serenity, was the youngest.

Behind the Nisga’a Dancers and a North Coast Transition Society banner, marchers wearing large numbered placards walked in single file, representing the 36 women believe to have met their final fates along the stretch of Highway 16 between Prince Rupert and Prince George.

Simultaneously, similar marches were occurring in the other communities linked by this riddled run of pavement.

According to the local march organizer, Grainne Barthe, of the North Coast Transition Society, the march to “Take Back the Highway” is meant to commemorate the lives lost and the women missing during the last 17 years, but it is also a reminder that there is still a killer out there on the highway.

Barthe made the reference to a woman who went missing from Prince Rupert just five days after last year’s march. She explained that while families, many of them from the local area, have helped to substantiate the number of 36 women murdered or missing, Amnesty International has the official number attributed to Highway 16 set at 22 and the RCMP has a total of nine open files.

Marlene Swift, program coordinator for the RCMP’s North Coast Victim Services, assured a seated crowd and the families of the missing and murdered women that the files will remain open until answers and/or perpetrator(s) are found.

Swift says she stays in regular contact with the families, even when there are not any new developments to report on the open cases, just to remind them that people care and that the RCMP continues to work the cases.

For Carey Stewart, principal of Nathan Burton Elementary School in Kincolith, who pulled his two-year old grandson, Tyrell, in a wagon along the procession route, it was important to him and the families of his community that he participate in the day’s ceremony.

“Families in Kincolith have been greatly impacted,” he said.

Vicki Hill, who was only six months old when the body of her 31-year old mother, Mary Jane Hill of Kincolith, was found on Highway 16 20 miles outside of Prince Rupert in 1978, spoke to the gathering in the ceremonial room at the Museum of Northern B. C.

“There are lots of young children walking the streets. Take the time to talk to them. Let them know what’s going on,” she said.

For 18 year old Catrina Stewart, who wore the number 36 during the procession to remember the 36th woman to have gone missing along Highway 16, it was important to “pay respect to the women.”

It feels good to be a part of this,” she said.

For Tamara Young who wore the number one placard and who carried her five and a half month old daughter, Serenity, for the entire procession, it was about the women who have gone missing and the young girls yet to become women.

“Talk to your children,” Vicki Hill implored the crowd gathered in the ceremonial room at the museum.

“Tell them you love them.”